Obituary. 135 



communication to ' The Ibis ' was a letter on the " Geo- 

 graphical Distribution of Birds, '^ dated Batchian, March 

 1859, containing criticisms and suggestions in regard to 

 the Zoo-geographical Regions as proposed by Dr. P. L. 

 Sclater in a paper published in the Linnean Society^s 

 Journal of the previous year. These studies finally culmi- 

 nated in his classical book ' The Geographical Distribution 

 of Animals^ (1876), and that fascinating volume of essays, 

 ' Island Life ' (1880). The general account of his wanderings 

 in the east was contained in two volumes on 'The Malay 

 Archipelago/ not published till 1869, but since often re- 

 printed — which forms with Bates' 'River Amazon' and 

 Darwin's ' Journal of Researches ' the three most entrancing 

 works of natural-history travels ever written. 



After his return from the Dutch Indies Wallace settled 

 down in England, and spent the rest of his long life writing 

 mostly on problems of natural history, but also on those of 

 economics, politics, and psychology, on all of which subjects 

 he held advanced and original views. 



He was elected an Extraordinary Member of the B. O. U. 

 in 1860, while still in the east, and between 1859 and 1874 

 wrote a good many papers in ' The Ibis,' chiefly about the 

 birds he had met with and collected in the Malay Archi- 

 pelago. A list of these is added to this memoir. He also 

 communicated a series of papers on his ornithological 

 collections to the Zoological Society. 



Many honours and distinctions were conferred on Wallace. 

 He was awarded a Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 

 1868, and in 1890 very appropriately the Darwin Medal, 

 but it was not till 1893 that he was elected a Fellow of the 

 Society. He received honorary degrees of LL.D. from Dublin 

 in 1882, and of D.C.L. from Oxford in 1889, and was chosen 

 a member of the Order of Merit in 1908. In 1881 he was 

 granted a Civil List pension of £200 a year. In addition to 

 many other books on political and social problems he 

 published an autobiography, ' My Life,' in 1905, reissuing it 

 in a condensed form in 1908. 



